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Performance
Of course the most desired improvement for any multimedia development tool would be in performance. This is one area that can stop a user friendly development tool from being the defacto standard. Director 5 certainly has made big strides in this area beginning with the lingo execution.

The lingo supposedly executes 50% faster than previous versions. Unfortunately, however, it's not usually the lingo that slows the performance of a movie, it's the size and number of graphics. Director can still handle only a 300kb rate of change between the frames, before performance is noticeably effected. That means if a sprite or several sprites are animated, the total combined size of all of the sprites changing should not be above 300kb. Director 5 also now supports pre-loading of movies in the background, giving developers more control over their movies performance.


New Lingo Features
There are nearly 100 new lingo commands, many for the new Shockwave abilities, and others allow for scriptable authoring. There is also a new debugger and watcher window, for enhanced troubleshooting. They have also added a new "categorized" Lingo menu to help you find commands easier.

HELP!
The help application for Director was always a fairly solid feature, though not always useful. The new help is faster, seems more complete, and has a very nice "post-it note" feature where you can add you own notes. Though the other major disappointment is that there is no help anywhere for developing Shockwave. In fact the manuals never even mention Shockwave!

Text Handling
One of the most requested changes now integrated includes built-in formatted and Anti-aliased text. There are now two ways to handle text; the old way has been renamed "fields" and the new way is referred to as "text." Director 5 permits importing of RTF files as text cast members. This provides the ability for much more precise control over the text with new features such as kerning, tracking, line spacing, tabs and indents.

Cast Control
Director 5 also adds support for multiple casts. Using lingo commands, developers have the ability to switch casts dynamically in a projector. This allows you to create templates and replace contents on the fly.

The update also adds the ability to import a wider variety of cast members utilizing new APIs. This is part of the new "open architecture" ability. It will allow more advanced developers to write an interface for new data types such as QuickDraw 3D and Quicktime VR in C or C++.

Director 5 also has expanded the File format importing ability, especially for Windows. Most importantly gif's, though we were very disappointed that the same wasn't done for the Mac. The other major disappointment is that Director 5 still imports the cast members at the bit depth of your monitor. That becomes a big problem for those ultimately developing for internet delivery.

Painting
Director modified the paint window and integrated what used to be the effects menu item into a visual tool bar across the top of the paint window. The effects items allow you to do cool things like, flip, distort, warp, skew, ect. It now seems like a much more natural place for these items. Director 5 also supports Photoshop filters! Not that we already didn't do most of our image work in Photoshop anyway, but it should prove to be useful when working with animations!

Should I get the Studio Package?
Good question, Director 5 is now also bundled in a "Studio" package, that includes Extreme 3D, Fractal Design painter, X-Res, Sound-Edit 16 plus Deck II for the Macintosh, and Sonic Foundry Sound Forge XP for Windows.. This is defiantly the "value" package, priced only $20.00 more than Director 5 itself, it's certainly the recommended choice. Director 5 is still a little pricy selling at $879.00 (Upgrade $399.00) and the Studio package is selling at $899.00 (Upgrade $489.00), but with all the new features, especially for Shockwave you'll give in sooner or later.

The idea behind the studio is Director's new "Macromedia Information Exchange" or (MIX) ability. This creates a tight integration between Director and these studio applications for extended capabilities. Like launching Sound Edit 16 from Director when you click on a sound cast member.

Conclusion
This upgrade positions Director as the premier tool to create fully interactive presentations, and applications for CD-ROMs and now the World Wide Web. The future streaming capabilitities of Shockwave, will help broaden the web audience by reducing download time for those with slower connections.

We are very pleased to see so many improvements in this upgrade, though there are still some issues to be worked out, such as the ability to compress movies even further, and versions of Shockwave that do not require your browser to use 8MB of memory.

The new animation, alignment, text, and lingo debugger tools are all welcome additions that improve the ease of use and capabilities of Director to keep it on the top of the must have list for serious developers, and garage artists alike.